


cue all the love to leave my heart

by citadelofswords



Category: The Room Where It Happened (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, M/M, Not A Happy Ending, vaguely canon compliant, vaguely spoilerish for past firebird sweet, we'll get there eventually lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 07:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18256661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: Once upon a time Tseer lived with his parents and he only saw Tessa and Corra when they did their vigilante work. Orron's bar was their home base, and he and Seshmir had drinking contests that Seshmir always won. They ran the occasional job together, but mostly he flew through the city as the Blue Darter, wild, daring, free.Then of course Wyatt fucking Vancroft turned out to be the Phoenix and everything changed.





	cue all the love to leave my heart

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing an into the spiderverse style superhero au on dreamwidth and then danielle hopped in with something and then richard added something and then i wrote this.
> 
> [here's the original fic](https://paradoxicalrenegade.dreamwidth.org/3403.html).
> 
> title from miss missing you by fall out boy

Once upon a time Tseer was just a bodyguard. Just another nameless mook. By day he was puffing himself up to look as imperious as possible while Wyatt grinned at investors. By night he was the Blue Darter, fighting crime and injustice across the streets of Luume.

Once upon a time Tseer lived with his parents and he only saw Tessa and Corra when they did their vigilante work. Orron's bar was their home base, and he and Seshmir had drinking contests that Seshmir always won. They ran the occasional job together, but mostly he flew through the city as the Blue Darter, wild, daring, free.

Then of course Wyatt fucking Vancroft turned out to be the Phoenix and everything changed.

Tseer wasn't supposed to have an archenemy. That wasn't how this was supposed to happen. Everything just happened so fast, with the threats and his parents forced underground and Orron's bar getting ransacked and Seshmir's office on  _ fire _ and the Heart of the Raven Queen that Tseer just, ended up as a superhero. And Wyatt ended up as his archenemy.

Tseer, right now, is not being a very good superhero.

Tseer, right now, is taking some information he's received and going to kill Wyatt Vancroft.

No one is going to know, is the thing. That it was him. Sure, he has the motive — sort of. If you think about it. Seshmir and Otto could guess. But most of the other cops— they probably won't. It'll just be seen as a vigilante putting down a bad, bad man.

 

* * *

 

Tseer slips in a third floor window and stealths into the kitchen. There's a guard there, with a sandwich; Tseer neatly knocks him out and takes the sandwich for good measure. He takes a bite from it and leans against the counter, glaring at the door from behind his mask as though daring someone to come in.

And someone does come in. Wyatt does, right as Tseer's finishing off his sandwich, and his eyes go wide. "Darter," he says, and he sounds surprised. "How did you find me?"

"You're not hard to find," Tseer retorts. He's so, so thankful that Wyatt doesn't know who he is behind the mask, because that would make an already difficult job a thousand times harder.

"You're here to kill me," Wyatt says, and his voice has gone flat around the edges, like it did the last time they saw each other as each other.

"How did you guess," Tseer says, and Wyatt has the good sense to run.

Tseer, reckless as always, draws the wand of Fireball and casts the spell down the hallway. It explodes against a wall, causing alarms to start ringing and fire to catch along the walls. But there's a hint of Wyatt darting into a side office, and Tseer growls and follows him.

He's angry enough to shake Hold Person when Wyatt attempts it, dodging under another flame attack to punch him in the solar plexus. Wyatt is not a melee fighter, Tseer knows this, and it's not hard to get him to his knees.

"Haven't I earned the right to know who's about to kill me?" Wyatt manages, but his skin is beginning to flame.

"No," Tseer growls. "You have earned  _ nothing _ ."

He's surprised when he gets a fist to the knee and he goes down with a squawk. Wyatt throws himself forward and they roll over and over, wrestling like children.

Tseer gets his talons down Wyatt's face and Wyatt tries to shove him over and Tseer doesn't know how he ends up in a headlock but then the mask is coming off and Wyatt's throwing him back and—

Yeah. This is the worst case scenario.

"Tseer," Wyatt stutters, eyes wide, and Tseer scoots backward. "You— no. I'm wrong. It's not you — it can't be you."

Tseer growls and tries to climb to his feet but he can't move. "It is you," Wyatt breathes. "Gods, Tseer, is this why you quit, why you broke up with me?" Tseer squeezes his eyes shut; the heat coming off Wyatt is unbearable. "You should have told me what was going on— we could have talked about it—,"

"You're experimenting on people," Tseer snaps. "You and Stanton both— I met, met Zero, Subject Zero, she doesn't remember who she is." Wyatt's eyes close, for a moment. "You can't even deny it, can you?!"

Alarms are still blaring outside. Wyatt's eyes, opening again to look at him, are crackling with fire. If Tseer doesn't finish this soon, it'll be the end of him.

"Tseer, please," Wyatt pleads. "I don't want— I don't want this. I didn't realize it was you behind the mask. I could have explained— I know why you think what you think and I could have told you you were wrong."

"I don't want to hear you try to justify—,"

"I'm not! I swear to you—," Wyatt growls, and the whole world falls silent.

"That's new," Tseer says.

"It's part of," Wyatt says, and a small fire starts in the center of the floor. There's an image in the flame, and Tseer leans forward to see despite everything in him telling him not to. The image in the flame coalesces into Stanton's laboratory, an image Tseer remembers all too well as the night everything went to shit. There's no sound but Tseer knows what Stanton is saying, recognizes the way Wyatt is standing, sees a shadow that he knows is himself darting away.

And then he watches Wyatt's face, which was wearing a neutral expression before Tseer left, twist downward, into upset, and he watches Wyatt walk away. Follows him down a hallway, around a corner, watches him head directly to one of the containment units— one of the ones Tseer remembers seeing, the night he and Tessa broke in to kill Stanton, hanging off its hinges like someone had kicked it open.

Like someone had Fireballed it open.

"Wyatt..."

In the memory Wyatt walks into the room with purpose and yanks hard on a door. Steam spills out of it, and he turns on his heel and walks away. The image lingers for a moment — and Tseer watches Zero peek out the doorway, hesitating for a moment before limping away.

“I met her last week,” Wyatt says, quietly. “Of course she freaked out, she was right to, but I told her I could get her the information she wanted. And I did.”

“You set her free,” Tseer says, because it’s the only thing he can say.

Wyatt’s image reappears in the frame, and he pauses, staring in the direction Zero went, and then he throws a Fireball at the door. He says something Tseer can’t hear, and then the sprinklers start raining down on him, and the image fizzles away.

“I know you have no reason to believe me,” Wyatt says, and Tseer can’t meet his eyes, can’t bring himself to look up at him. “I can’t— manipulate these images, but you’re— Tseer, I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not  _ going _ to hurt you.”

“You did!” Tseer snaps, and now he looks up into Wyatt’s eyes, and he burns. “You  _ did _ hurt me, Wyatt, you can’t just take that back now. You drove my parents underground, you threatened my friends, you almost killed Tessa— you can’t change that!”

“That’s the past, Tseer!” Wyatt says, and the room goes warmer. “And now it’s the future. I’m not going to stop you from leaving, I’m not going to— if you still—,” He sighs, and the room cools. “That’s the truth,” he says. “If you never accept it, that’s okay, I just— you needed to know. You needed to know.”

“You can’t fix this,” Tseer says, and he stands up. “You can’t undo everything you’ve done. That’s not how this works.”

“I know,” Wyatt says, and he stays on his knees. The alarms start blaring again, the real world returning to time around them. “And I know what I’ve done is probably unforgivable. I just want you to know the truth.”

Tseer growls, and yanks Wyatt to his feet. In doing so he unbalances himself and ends up stumbling backwards into a table, talons coming up instinctually to catch Wyatt before he falls too, and he freezes with his arms around Wyatt’s waist and their faces inches from each other.

The anger in him fades abruptly. Wyatt’s near cool to the touch now, the fire in his eyes dying, and he’s beginning to remember why he loved this man in the first place. Wyatt reaches up to brush back a feather or two along Tseer’s cheek and he holds his breath for a moment, holding his beak tightly shut, afraid to break the moment.

Wyatt doesn’t move his hand. “Tseer,” he murmurs.

There’s a loud BANG against the door and Tseer squawks, letting go of Wyatt, who leaps away. The banging starts up again, and now there’s shouting from the other side. Guards, probably, wanting to know if Wyatt’s alright.

“I’m fine!” Wyatt shouts, and he looks at Tseer. “Go, Tseer,” he says, and he scoops up the mask and presses it into Tseer’s talons. “Just get out of here.”

Tseer’s frozen for a moment, and he almost says “Not without you,” but then there’s more frantic knocking. “I’ll be fine,” Wyatt says. “I’m literally made of fire, you’re not. Just go.”

He doesn’t think twice— he jams the mask on over his head and he opens the window and he flees.

 

* * *

 

Once upon a time Tseer was a bodyguard, a nameless mook to everyone except the man he protected. He was sure about what was, and wasn’t right; what he would accept, and what he would not. He came home at night after fighting injustice and slept with a man who he later found out was causing half the injustice on his streets and he left. Because that’s what you did, right? When something was wrong, when someone was doing bad things? You fought it.

Tseer, now, has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to do.

**Author's Note:**

> CAN'T WAIT FOR THE SEQUEL WHEN [REDACTED]
> 
> hey if you want to hear more about this come join the room where it happened discord server and then yell at me for writing this, or just dm me on twitter @ citadelofswords


End file.
